He authored a ten-volume mystery series featuring Henry Rios, an openly gay protagonist who is a criminal defense lawyer.
[1] He then served as a judicial staff attorney for Arleigh Woods, the first female African-American appellate court justice in California, from 1986-1995.
One of the cases he worked on was Jasperson v. Jessica's Nail Clinic in 1989,[7] which resulted in the first published decision to uphold an HIV/AIDS anti-discrimination statute.
[5] The Little Death features Henry Rios, an openly gay Latino criminal defense lawyer who worked in Los Angeles.
He was inspired to create Rios because of a comment by author Toni Morrison about writing books that she wished she could have read when she was growing up.
[5] His follow-up novel, Goldenboy, published in 1988, received critical acclaim by the New York Times which called him a "brilliant storyteller.
"[5] From 1990-2000, Nava wrote five more Henry Rios books: How Town, The Hidden Law, The Death of Friends, The Burning Plain, and Rag and Bone.
[2][15] After not having written any new novels since 2000, Nava announced in 2008 that he had drafted a new work, The Children of Eve, which was set in the Mexican Revolution.
In October 2008, Nava married his partner George Herzog, an oncology nurse at the Veteran's Administration hospital in San Francisco.